Fujifilm X10 Officially Official, Unofficially Retro-Hot

Built like a tank, and with a proper viewfinder, the X10 reminds us of film cameras of yesteryear

As expected, Fujifilm has announced its much-leaked X10 compact, the little brother of the much-liked X100. As we saw yesterday, the specs put it into direct competition with the Canon G12, Nikon P7100 and Lumix LX5.

We already knew about the top ISO of 12,800, the 2.8-inch 460,000-dot LCD and 4x zoom, but now we have the rest of the specs. First, the body is made from magnesium alloy and the knobs and dials are all knurled aluminum. The viewfinder is big and bright and — judging by the amount of copy it gets in the press release — as good as those on film cameras. This alone will make the camera a must buy for some folks.

Continuing with the hardware, the lens starts at ƒ2.0 and only rises to ƒ2.8 when zoomed all the way out. The zoom range is 28-112mm (35mm equivalent), and the zoom is manual, controlled by turning a ring around the lens. Strike two to Fujifilm. This is a total winner.

The LCD is small by modern standards, but then you might not be using it much

Strike three is the short, short shutter lag — just ten milliseconds. Nikon’s D3 has a reported lag of 40 milliseconds, so you can see that this is pretty impressive.

The only thing that really lets the camera down is the sensor, a 2/3-inch 12 megapixel chip. This is the same size that you’ll find in the rivals listed above, so it makes sense, but it would be nice to have something slightly larger, if only to give a shallower depth of field.

Then again, I shouldn’t complain. The X10 thrashes the competition in many other ways. Oh, and it shoots 1080p video, too. Fujifilm hasn’t revealed the price yet, but you can bet it won’t be far beyond the $500 charged by Nikon, Canon and Panasonic in this part of the market.